Are You Focusing on Your Dashboard?

I am working with an organization today that is creating a Decision Support Department to integrate all the data and information available to assist in making the “best” decision. Most small businesses and mid-size companies do not have the financial capabilities or available people to create such a department. All companies have the ability to manage data, monitor progress, and formulate benchmarks…..but they don’t or, let me be kind, don’t do it well.

Let’s compare companies to automobiles. All managers and supervisors, no matter what vehicle they are driving, need to glance at the dashboard periodically and it hopefully will reflect some sort of information that will be valuable in determining how the vehicle is performing and assist them in their decision-making processes relative to good car care.
The number of gauges available to you will vary according to your role and responsibilities associated with the vehicle. Some of the managers or supervisors will be driving “Mini-Coopers” while others may be driving “Chevrolet Malibus”. Senior management may drive a “BMW or Audi”, while the CFO and CEO will drive “Mercedes”. Remember, the difference in vehicle relates to the size and sophistication of company they work for while the dashboard enables them to view their performance at any point in time with the vehicle running.

Dashboards (a millennial business buzz word) should be popping up in most businesses because we need to get back into a goal-oriented environment. Competition is hotter than ever, great employees are scarcer than ever, knowledge pools are retiring at a rapid pace, and technology is moving faster than a speeding bullet. In other words, we better have a pulse on the performance of our vehicle to make sure it can handle the long trip or the excessive weight of the trailer. We need to make sure we glance at our gauges every few minutes to make sure we don’t overheat or ruin the engine by not adding oil.

One of the competencies that are needed by the leader of a company today is forward thinking. It relates to the ability to focus on the desired outcome and formulating a plan that can be implemented to achieve that specific outcome. Outcomes are only as good as the metrics you have incorporated in the plan and measured during implementation and define the desired outcome…..in other words, metrics allow us to measure our performance.

There are all kinds of fancy software that can make your vehicle’s dashboard look like a Mercedes. Or, there is a simple screensaver program that allows you to put the Dashboard right on your computer screen. We need to get back to basics. We need to focus on the things that got us here and monitor the things that are going to get us where we want to go. By clearly establishing benchmarks and monitoring our progress by recognizing what we do that makes a difference, we will continue to be highly competitive, profitable, and here for years to come. CEO’s and Business Owners, start your engines and watch your gauge . . .you need everyone in the company to focus on your goals!

Gloom in the Workplace

Generational diversity is a not subject in the HR community and we all realize that in not the too distant future, we will have five generations in the workplace. Leadership IQ, a Washington DC based training company polled over 11,000 employees in the United States and found that all generations expressed some dissatisfaction. Furthermore, they note that the rate of disconnect was almost directly related to age. The older worker was the most satisfied and the younger generations expressed the lowest satisfaction rate.

The survey asked a variety of questions relative to the workplace and the management style being presented today. The title of the article was “Workplace Gloom is Universal” and appeared in the February issues of Training and Development by staff writer, Michael Laff.

We have focused our training and development course, programs, and processes on mid-level management and we also believe that many managers are not learning the intangible skills necessary to manage a staff. Most employees want feedback in a timely fashion and they want to know exactly where they stand if relation to their peers in terms of performance and productivity. Keeping the workforce content is not a priority in most organizations today. Competition, economic conditions, cost of materials and supplies, healthcare benefits and more are keeping us all very “short-sighted” with our employees. It appears that the younger generation craves praise and become frustrated easily. Don’t we all?

People skills have been lost in history. They obviously haven’t been passed down through the generations. It must be because the older generation has accommodated to the “lack of praise” in the workplace and is no longer offering that commodity. When will we realize that we must continue to motivate our employees and keep them engaged in the strategy and development of our company? If we don’t, they will continue to move on until another company does just that. How many jobs do we expect them to have by the time they are thirty five?

We need to start training our managers or that figure will be in double digits.

Leadership and Dysfunctional Behaviors

Leadership.

I have always related leadership to being influential in the workplace. Being able to influence the culture of an organization or being able to compliment the core competencies of an organization have always been integral components of a successful leader. I was intrigued by an article in the February issue of Training and Development that reported that 90% of leaders say dysfunctional behaviors have become acceptable in the workplace and the consequences that have resulted from this bad behavior are lower employee satisfaction, lower productivity, and decreased quality. Our organization focuses on the healthcare marketplace and we find that dysfunctional behaviors play a major role in decreased quality and lower productivity. Both patience and employee satisfaction is determined by those factors.

Is it because we don’t consider dysfunctional behavior poor performance? Inappropriate behavior in the workplace is destructive and must be considered a performance issue.
We should focus on the behavioral issues within an organization and make sure that they are addressed by our performance management system. According to a most recent survey completed by Joseph Glenny, A Provo-Utah based author and management consultant, “finger pointing” or shifting blame, gossiping, and creating territorial borders and boundaries are three of the most destructive behaviors in the workplace today. It also noted that 64% of leaders do very little or nothing to change these behaviors.

It appears that the leaders today are fearful toward addressing the issues because of the consequences…whatever they may be. Many leaders turn to HR or Training and ask them to sprinkle “magical dust” over the situation and expect instantaneous results from the training department or vendors.

Changing behavior is a process and it requires implementation of more than just “dust”. It requires expectations in the workplace from the top down. The leadership team and their management team must define what behaviors they would like to see while stating emphatically those behaviors that will no longer be tolerated. The Performance Management system must focus on the interpersonal side of managing and believe it or not, these behavioral changes can be measured. It appears that the influential leaders of today aren’t willing to view behavior in the same light as they do performance. Maybe we should redefine leadership and not associate it with influence. It obviously is not working!

Lunch N Learn

The foundation of personal and professional success lies in understanding yourself, understanding others, and realizing the impact of your personal behavior on the people around you. Innovative Leadership is inviting you for the first of their Lunch n’ Learn series, Understanding Dimensions of Behavior.

This complimentary mini-workshop on March 31st from 12 -1pm is designed to provide you with a better understanding of yourself and others so that you can improve communications and build more effective relationships. Register Now

Each month Innovative Leadership will have a free Lunch n Learn seminar on pressing business issues. Upcoming seminars will include Relationship Selling, Hiring and Selection and much more.

Innovative Leadership is a performance improvement company that provides solutions for today's business challenges. They offer unique programs, products and processes that can be customized to fit the specific needs of your company. Innovative Leadership has over thirty years of management, training, sales and marketing experience with Fortune 500 companies, mid-size companies, and small businesses including professional practices. Their staff includes certified facilitators, coaches, and financially oriented business consultants.

Visit http://www.innovativeleadershipdv.com/ for more information or call 609.390.2830

Innovative Leadership Events Announced

Lunch n' Learn Series:

3/31/2008 - Monday - 12pm-1pm
Location: Marmora, NJ

Subject: DiSC Dimensions of Behavior helps you discover and capitalize on your unique behavioral strengths. DiSC can also help you better respond to the communication needs of other people. What is your Dimension of Behavior? Register



4/28/08 - Monday - 12pm-1pm
Location: Marmora, NJ

Subject: Relationship Selling Register

_______________________________________________________________

Workshops:

Behavioral Interviewing Workshop
4/10/08 - Wednesday - 9a-12p
Location: Marmora, NJ


This workshop provides a step-by-step plan of action to complete the interviewing cycle. You will learn how to excel in an interviewing environment.


- Save time and money by focusing on key performance skills
- Learn questioning techniques that will give you control of the interview
- Improve your retention by hiring right

Register

Cautiously Optimistic

The Feds have reduced the rates and are forecasted to do it again this week and the American Corporation and small business owner are to let out a big “sigh of relief”.
I can tell you from my experiences this past week that no one is breathing a “sigh of relief”. Companies have put some of their spending on hold, like training and development, marketing and promotional materials, and are continuing to focus on the costs and related expenses that can be reduced.

Why is it that we as business people tend to hide in our caves until the storm blows over instead of getting out in the mix and making the necessary adjustments so that everything is more in order to weather the storm than ever before?

The return on investment for training and development expenses can be measured and defined. Believe it or not, there is a system where behavioral change can even be measured over time so why is it that we don’t take a more aggressive approach to an external threat like economic conditions, especially the prospect of a recession?

One of the reasons we are not more aggressive when threats affect our businesses is that we have not strategically planned for this threat. Any company that did a strategic planning exercise using S.W.O.T. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis or similar exercise certainly came up with economic conditions as a potential threat in 2008. If you didn’t record economic conditions as a possible threat, please retire now and/or transition or sell your business. The problem I see is that most people use strategic planning to set action steps when the climate internally and externally is at its calmest and not as a vehicle to help them through the periods that get the roughest.

So, let’s sit back down and make sure our external resources in terms of opportunities and threats are well reflected in our planning as well as our internal strengths and weaknesses.
Effective organizational effectiveness can minimize the effect that an external event has on businesses and people can become totally engaged when they know what they need to do to overcome the external challenge.

Awareness, planning, implementation and results…it sure sounds like something that focuses everyone on the challenge, defines a plan to get somewhere, allows for mid-course correction if the weather changes, and focuses everyone on the results. I guess if we all do that I can become cautiously optimistic….but I am not.

Hiring Blamed for Poor Performance

A consulting firm in California confirmed that nearly one third of CEO’s say that as many as half of their new employees haven’t been meeting expectations. A principle of the firm noted that most CEO’s have no faith in their hiring processes.

That is the first problem for the CEO. Don’t call it a process. Most companies don’t have a process. I work with small companies and companies with over 5000 employees and none exhibit a real “Hiring and Selection” Process. All expect their hiring or recruitment personnel to just find the right people. Those people are the ones with the skills and training combined with the right attitude and excellent work ethic just waiting to be interviewed. Wrong!

The difference in processes can vary from using a simple HRIS system for only resume retrieval to a type written job description that includes suggested behavioral interviewing questions. I just can’t believe that it’s taking a rocket-scientist to realize that people are failing in the workplace because employers don’t have the proper “hiring and selection” process. Most companies today have yet to realize that finding the “right” person for the right job or just hiring the right person with the right attitude, skill, training, and work ethic takes more than just leaving the front door open.

We have now found the culprit for poor performance. The process that must determine whether someone has or is lacking the skill, training, attitude, and ethics is failing not because of lack of process, but a lack of commitment within that CEO’s company. The tools, methodology, technology, format, and human components are all available but no one appears to have the energy or commitment to put it all together.

Since we can’t find the people to integrate the tools, technology, format, and people to provide a well-rounded “hiring and selection” process, we must take three steps back and again blame it on the process….or is it the people?

If companies don’t take their hiring practices seriously, they will eliminating any opportunity of finding the person with the right attitude, skill, training and ethics that can make a difference!